Honorary street signs may face curb

1,000 now cited

official wants to slow name game

July 09, 2002|By Sabrina L. Miller, Tribune staff reporter.

Those brown, honorary street signs commemorating local heroes, world leaders and every obscure potentate in between, have become more headache than honor, at least for the city's Transportation Department.

To give the department a break from the record number of honorary designations city aldermen have been approving, Ald. Thomas Allen (38th) thought it would be a good idea to pass an ordinance limiting the number of signs erected for honorees.

"We have now surpassed the 1,000 mark in honorary street signs. The Department of Transportation has not been able to get more of our prioritized signs up as quickly as we would like," Allen told the City Council's Transportation Committee Monday.

Citing budget and labor constraints on the Transportation Department, Allen proposed limiting the number of signs erected for each honoree to four. Some designees, like Emmett Till Road, which runs along 3 miles of 71st Street on the South Side, have as many as three dozen. Additionally, family members of honorees are given copies of the signs for free and the requests can run into the dozens, Allen said.

Despite some controversy, over naming, such as objections over designees like Playboy magazine founder Hugh Hefner, the City Council broke its own record last year issuing 120 designations, up from 103 in 2000.

Although the tradition has been around since 1964, it has ballooned since the late 1980s after the passage of a City Council ordinance making the street designation process official.

Allen, who heads the Transportation Committee, failed to budge most of the committee on the issue, which was held until December.

Some aldermen said the estimated $20,000 annual cost was negligible, while others scolded Transportation Department officials for giving the honorary signs too high a priority.

Ald. Leslie Hairston (5th) said she has trouble understanding why it has taken a year to erect signs prohibiting litter in her ward, but honorary street signs still were being placed.

"In 365 days I could have hammered out my own damn signs," Hairston told Transportation Commissioner Miguel d'Escoto. "I am concerned when the signs that are necessary for the greater good of the whole public become secondary to honorary street signs."

Ald. Bernard Stone (50th) disagreed, saying that in his diverse North Side ward, the designations give residents pride.

"It makes a lot of people happy and has become the focal point of local parades. I think that's a good thing, not a bad thing. The cost is irrelevant. As far as I'm concerned I'm going to continue to honor communities within my community," Stone said.